I am delighted to wrap up this year’s Women’s History Month Q & A series with Della Leavitt. She and I have been following each other around the writing world, on-line and in real life, for a long time.

After careers in tech and math education, Della began an intensive DIY study of writing fiction within the vibrant Midwestern writing community including coursework and a fellowship at the Newberry Library. She continues to study within editors’ private workshops. Della served on the Board of Directors of the long-running Off Campus Writers’ Workshop for four years. She lives in Chicago with her spouse of several decades and their fearless feline Vic (Victoria). Their son and his wife live nearby along with daughter, Nora Shirley.

Her debut novel, Vivian’s Decision (She Writes Press) is evocative work of historical fiction set in 1956 in Chicago. It is the story of Vivian Jacobson, an overwhelmed mother grappling with whether to have an illegal abortion, who discovers her Jewish immigrant mother faced a similar crisis when pregnant with Vivian. Vivian’s Decision is an all too relevant story of repeated history, female friendship, and the strength that it takes to make choices of one’s own. It will be released on April 14, 2026 and is available for pre-order now.

Take it away, Della!

What inspired you to write Vivian’s Decision?

Not exactly “what”, but “who.” My foray into creative writing came later in life than most after my lengthy careers in the tech field and mathematics education. I had an idea to write the serendipitous story as a gift for my (now, late) mother’s 90th birthday about how my parents met after my father returned to Chicago after fighting in Europe during World War II followed by several months of German occupation. I had long been a discerning reader of fiction and participated in a women’s book group that ran for 30 years, but I never imagined I could become a writer. I soon realized how much I needed to learn if I were to write artful fiction and signed up for many workshops, including Chicago’s StoryStudio and the Off Campus Writers’ Workshop.

I became curious about mother’s mother, a Russian Jewish immigrant who died before I was born. I’m named for her. Her Hebrew name was Dena Rivka, but when she arrived at Ellis Island in 1906, the officials named her Della, a popular female “D” name during that time. She died around age 60 (although we never knew her exact age) in Los Angeles where my mother’s six siblings and their families had moved during the 1940s when they left Chicago. Each of my Grandmother Della’s seven children revered their mother and often spoke of her hard life. Each one named a child for her, often with the initials “D.R.” I’m Della Ruth. There are also Delle, Dan, Debi, Dennis, Denise, and Donna. I wondered whether having seven children–five born at home in a flat on Chicago’s West side and two at Mt. Sinai Hospital—had shortened my grandmother’s life.

Vivian’s Decision began as the  story of Vivian’s immigrant mother, Hannah Kolson, as I began imagine how powerless women must have felt, particularly poor and immigrant women, with almost no control over childbearing. I recalled one of my aunts relating a story when she acted as her mother’s English language go-between. The local druggist admonished my grandmother: “if you don’t want this baby, I’ll take him!” That scene grew in my imagination. It appears in an early chapter of Vivian’s Decision.
As I wrote, I felt strongly that I wanted to portray the lives of Jewish immigrants who came to Chicago in the early 20th Century to escape violent Tsarist pogroms and also, the next generations of their Chicago-born children and their families. How they strived to assimilate during the post-WWII Cold War era. This is a world that no longer exists yet resonates with many issues in today’s United States including antisemitism and the backlash against immigrants or perceived immigrants.

Vivian’s Decision deals with questions of reproductive rights in a time before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. Are there special challenges in writing about a historical event with echoes in current politics?

The women I wrote about in Vivian’s Decision who lived in the first half of the 20th century all knew that abortion was against the law, despite it being an act many would seek out for various reasons. During my 2021 research fellowship at the Newberry Library, I found statistical references often broken down by religion and the number of a mother’s previous births.  In Chapter 11  of Birth Control: Its Use and Misuse (1934, Harper and Sons), titled “Abortion,” Dorothy Dunbar Bromley cites and summarizes several prominent studies:

•  “The great majority of abortions occur today among married women.” (p. 138)
• “Out of 5010 patients of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York who admitted to having abortions 28 per cent were Protestant, 26 percent were Catholic, and 43 per cent were Jewish, representing the same ratio of religious belief as obtains among all of the Clinic’s patients. After the fifth pregnancy, the Catholic ration led all others.” (p. 142)
• “There are all kinds and varieties of abortionists, ranging from extremely skillful surgeons to one-horse practitioners and bungling midwives. …Abortionists of any class, as a rule, avoid trouble by refusing to abort a patient who is more than two and a half months along…” (p. 143)

As with quantification of any illegal activity, it is unlikely these counts are accurate, but the large numbers imply that the practice of abortion was not uncommon, although each woman would have made her decision specific to her situation. This would always be an individual act.

There is a tendency, as with all historical fiction, to write about an action like abortion through the lens of today’s mores. I tried to keep in mind the perspectives of women and men of Vivian’s Decision who lived in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s who never dreamed abortion could become the law. My own view was different. As a young woman, I was a member of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union who celebrated on the night of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling. By that time, abortion was legal in New York, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. It was clear that nationwide legalization was imminent.

Before the Dobbs decision in June 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, I had already written a number of drafts of Vivian’s Decision with several different endings. Given the dramatic increase of draconian restrictions including banning all elective abortions and termination of unviable pregnancies that threaten a mother’s life, I began to feel the urgency to portray a 1950s middle class mother with a supportive husband, who had options. Vivian Jacobson had a referral from a reputable obstetrician to an (albeit, illegal) abortion provider. When at last, I turned to Pulitizer Prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1947 poem “The Mother” to explore the feelings and universality of this truly individual decision, I found the emotional heft I needed to write an ending attuned to the times.

Who are some of your favorite writers of historical fiction?

Like many historical fiction readers, author Kate Quinn stands out for me. Her novels weave twisting plots, and often unlikely, heroic female characters that recreate eras replete with vivid period details. Among my favorites of Quinn’s novels are The Briar Club (2024), taking place in a 1950s McCarthy-era rooming house in Washington, DC; The Huntress (2019), in which a Russian female bomber pilot a British male journalist, and linguist, team up on a worldwide hunt for Nazis after World War II has ended; and The Rose Code (2021) that follows three women from divergent backgrounds who are recruited to serve as codebreakers in England’s Bletchley Park.

Along my writer’s journey over these last twelve years, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have met, befriended, and learned from several generous and talented authors, either in-person or remotely, over Zoom. All have enriched my life. In the last year, two of my contemporaries published well-researched, debut historical novels. Both also drew upon family history for their initial inspirations.  Janis Falk grew up in Detroit’s Polish community. She now lives in Wisconsin’s Door County. Janis looked to her Depression-era forebears for Not Yet Lost (She Writes Press, September 2025). At the core of this novel are the hardships and triumphs that female cigar factory workers endured leading to their courageous strike in 1937.  Leslie Schover grew up in the Chicago area. She’s a retired research psychologist living in Houston. Her debut novel Fission: A Story of Atomic Heartbreak (She Writes Press, January 2026) springs from when Leslie’s parents and older sister lived in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Leslie’s father was a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Her father was one of the scientists who signed the petition urging President Truman not to drop the atomic bomb before demonstrating the extent of the weapon’s potential devastation.

One of my favorite novelists, Elizabeth Berg, doesn’t always write historical fiction. While writing the first draft of Vivian’s Decision, I found inspiration in Berg’s historical novel, Dream While You’re Feeling Blue (2008) about a loving Chicago Irish family with

Want to know more about Della and her work?  Check out her website: https://www.dellaleavitt.com/